Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki

Life is nothing but just a game. A game of life that is! Every decision you make will affect what's going on around you, especially your classmates. Tomozaki Fumiya, our main MC here suprisingly is the best gamer in the popular online game "Tackfam". Despite that, he is actually the bottomless-tier character when it comes to socializing. Lacking social skills and also have a slightly unkempt appearance. Then later meet Aoi Hinami who is a god-tier character, an opposite to Tomozaki-kun. With her social skills, Tomozaki-kun embarks on a journey to become a top-tier character in the game of life. Throughout the episodes, you'll noticed Tomozaki-kungradually changing from being an introvert and become better in socializing as he meet new characters especially an energetic and popular girl named Minami Nanami. The story doesn't appeared to be rushed so that's a plus one for me. The animation in the anime is great overall. Especially it gives several visualisation of the situations Tomozaki-kun is facing and also whenever Aoi Hinami is giving illustration of the situations. Overall, the anime has a lot of pointers on the social situations happening around us. It has a lot of things for us to learn in the anime. And as a drama anime, it has done really well and very enjoyable so far. If this is the type of anime you enjoy, feel free to watch it and follow Tomozaki-kun's journey to become a top-tier character.

Bottom-Tier Tomozaki is the hidden gem of this season. Many dropped it at first while those who remained slowly began to notice how their view changed, just like the characters did. It’s a Romcom that isn’t revolutionary but introduces concepts that makes it interesting and engaging to follow. It was certainly a show that exceeded my expectations. It’s a true character growth driven story of becoming a better person. On its surface it’s nothing mind-blowing and appears to be a standard Romcom about an unpopular guy who somehow meets the legend of the class and gets a harem that you've seen countless times yet this assumption is verymisleading and Tomozaki, despite appearing as such, is not at all like that. All the girls introduced are not meant to be part of his harem and the show has wrongly been labeled as such. They are characters that get development themselves, as well as aiding the development of our MC while not coming off as too cliche or tropey. They really feel like people that you could meet in real life. While you may argue that the situation that our MC, the top player in Atafami finds himself in is very hard to relate to, you have to acknowledge the effort he puts in to change himself. I'd say that the beginning doesn’t seem promising at all but the more we level up the greater it becomes. Everyone deserves a second chance if given the opportunity, right? Then even he should be able to fight to change himself for the better and we, as the audience should understand where he is coming from and not mock his efforts. Such a view is very misleading, and could lead to incorrect assumptions. No matter what, the fact still remains that in order to achieve something, even winning a mere game, you have to put your entire heart and soul into it - something I find admirable. It's a show that is neither a generic Romcom nor a harem. Its main appeal is the theme of self improvement through hard work and desire, something that would be praise worthy to many and becomes apparent in how our main hero grows as a character and as a human being. Growth doesn't happen overnight. It's a long process that requires a lot of time and soul put into it. This is the message the show tries to convey and we can see how the behaviour and self esteem of Tomozaki evolves the more he levels up and the audience that learns from his mistakes and the quests given by our main girl, Hinami Aoi. The quests that the main girl gives to MC may seem trivial but are actually helpful in the grand scheme of things. It's one of the main criticisms that the show has received - that it’s cringy, unrealistic and out of touch with reality which is clearly wrong. We should remember that Tomozaki is a loner that has troubles with social interaction therefore these trivial goals that she sets up for him are actually very meaningful despite being so small. The type of a goal doesn't matter, what truly matters is the effort you put in order to achieve said goal. The animation of this show is very minimalistic with no dynamic movement. At times it serves as a means to move from point A to point B. The majority of the content delivered is through the dialogue of characters. It's decent. While it's certainly not top tier, it's no doubt bearable to watch. There were few memorable OSTs that played during crucial scenes but often than not it was a sad piano to create the atmosphere or a very light hearted soundtrack to rekindle hope. Overall the music wasn't as memorable but not that bad. I'd like to point out that even the lyrics of a song matter in this show so keep an eye on that. From a show that started with an interesting premise that at first became something to make fun of, Tomozaki changed for the better and so did the viewers who were watching his development unfold. It's a series that while not revolutionizing the genre made something unique and intriguing enough to follow by showcasing real character growth that rarely ever happens these days. If you wish to see a tale of a man who changed his life from the better, struggled but with effort and heart reached his goals, then I recommend watching "Bottom-Tier Tomozaki".

Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun is about your typical loner gamer dude who plays *not* Smash Bros at a very high level, and decides to one day meet up with the person right after him on the leaderboard, who ends up being a cute, popular girl from his class. After this meeting, this girl, Aoi, having scolded our protagonist, decides to help him out by teaching him how to become a riajuu, a “normie” you could say. I really wish I were be here right now saying good things about this show and how I used some of the advice Aoi gave to Tomozaki myself, but alas, here Iam, incredibly disappointed by what could have been a nice romcom with a school setting. The show presents an interesting idea, I haven’t actually seen anything like it before, but the execution of the premise set in place by the first few episodes is a complete miss. So, what is this premise? Tomozaki goes through several lessons with Aoi, who teaches him basic social skills, manners, posture, and so on, and gives him challenges such as “talk to three different girls” or “force a smile while wearing a mask”. Tomozaki doesn’t necessarily do well at completing these challenges, but he does try his earnest to do so, more often than not with the help of Aoi. Here is my first issue with show. If the whole premise is about the evolution of a loner into a riajuu, then why does Aoi do most of the work for him? It would be way more satisfying to watch Tomozaki do these challenges on his own, failing them or not, with all the cringy situations that these challenges may bring. I fail to understand why Aoi would be so invested into a random dude she met online. She’s not in love with him, and Tomozaki’s first impression on her was awful. Is it pity? Is it self-fulfillment? Who knows, but Aoi intervening as much as she does only reinforces all of the problems this show has. There’s an analogy Jaku-Chara brings up regarding real life and games, even though it’s slightly “cringy”. If real life is treated as a game, then the social skills and achievements can be the equivalent of the skills and achievements in a video game. Tomozaki being really good Tackfam comes with a contrast of him being really bad at real life. This brings up quite a disparity. If you’ve ever played a fighting game, you’d know how much effort it takes to be good, let alone a top level player in said game, even in a game like Smash Bros. It takes years and years of practice before you could consider yourself competent at a fighting game, practice that Tomozaki has clearly put into Tackfam out of his passion for the game. So why is it that he goes from being a complete loner to a good looking socially capable guy in the span of 4-5 episodes?! How come the show is 12 episodes long when Tomozaki achieves all but one of his goals in 5 episodes? Of course, the rest of the show feels like filler content that serves close to no purpose to the overall plotline. I will attribute this to poor pacing. I assume that the light novel goes way deeper into Tomozaki’s struggles and hardships, or at least I hope so. You might now ask me, “why am I comparing real life scenarios to fiction?” or “Why does it matter that Tomozaki achieved his goals quickly?”. The answer to that is simple, suspension of disbelief. I’ll let you google what suspension of disbelief means if you don’t know this term, but it’s a fancy way of referring to the reader or watcher believing and investing themselves into a given scenario. Here lies the main problem of Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun: I do not believe a single event that happens in the anime. When you pick a school setting for your work of fiction, you can go down two paths, a realistic depiction of high school life with down to earth, believable characters (for example, Hibike! Euphonium), or an absurd depiction of high school with extraordinary events and out-of-this-earth characters (for example, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu). These paths aren’t that well defined, and most of the time you can get away with mixing absurd characters with regular high school events (for example, Chuu2Koi), which ends up being quite a nice way of showing what a character is going through, be it a completely exaggerated depiction of an emotion or an emphasis on the importance of a particular event in the character’s life. Chuu2Koi does this with chuuni magic battles, Monogatari does this with long elaborate dialogue, although Monogatari isn’t your typical high school setting show. Point is, your story and characters have to be believable or relatable. You want the reader or viewer to care for the characters you’ve written. As for Tomozaki, his only relatable point is that he’s a loner, and so are most anime watchers. Nobody will relate to being the best at a certain game, and very few will relate to being competent to a high level at a certain game, and most certainly NOBODY will relate to Tomozaki’s character progression. Without being relatable, the main character now must appeal to the audience with his actions, most of which are dictated by a third party or happenstance. He’s effectively a puppet of the other characters in the show, sometimes adding his own ad lib to the situations he finds himself in. Even after becoming a “normie” 5 episodes in, Tomozaki just comes off as bland and uninteresting. He’s nothing like OreGairu’s Hachiman who’s a way better example of a loner working on himself in order to become a better human being. This is the main problem, Jaku-Chara is too unrealistic to be a down to earth high school romcom, and too ordinary to be an absurd high school romcom. The viewer is stuck in a situation where they cannot relate to the main character while also not being able to enjoy his personality or the results of his actions. They cannot “suspend their disbelief” in order to fully invest themselves in the show. The other characters don’t help. Aoi has no personality, she hardly even fits a trope. She’s somewhat twofaced, but not enough for her to be an appealing or interesting character. Minami isn’t a character; I refuse to acknowledge that someone wrote her as she is. She’s an amalgamation of completely different charm points and gags that the writer probably finds appealing in a waifu. She is so over-the-top energetic that it becomes hard to watch any scene that involves her. Izumi is your generic high school girl, again, without a personality. Out of the female characters, this only leaves Kikuchi, voiced by Kayano Ai, who I like a lot, and Hanabi, who’s cute and inoffensive. I could mention the male characters, but other than Nakamura, who’s sort of another rival to Tomozaki, they, yet again, serve no purpose and just act as filler content, NPCs for Tomozaki to interact with. Speaking of Kayano Ai, her and Nobuhiko make this show bearable. The rest of the voice actors are unremarkable at best, obnoxious at worst. Hasegawa Ikumi does an awful job at Minami, but then again, Minami is an abomination of a character, so that’s most likely because of poor direction. The opening is a cheerful song by DIALOGUE+, an unknown idol group, and sounds as generic as you’d expect it to. I thought it was ok at first, but it very quickly got obnoxious to listen to. The ending is unremarkable, as one would expect. Finally, the art and character design are fine. They’re bland, and I absolute hate the modern character design standards when it comes to drawing eyes and faces, but that’s just me. Again, unremarkable, but at least the animation isn’t appalling. Without a solid and interesting story, Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun fails to entice the viewer with its unremarkable characters. The viewer finds themselves watching seemingly unbelievable events unfold as the main character lackadaisically moves from happenstance to happenstance that just happen to work out in his favour. Without achievements that can be attributed to Tomozaki’s efforts, the show feels like an empty shell with no substance, an exhibition of events that collectively have no impact. There is very little to take away from Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun, I wouldn’t recommend trying Aoi’s advice in real life, let alone watching the show. If you want a good story about a loner working on himself, watch OreGairu. TL;DR: Pros: -Kayano Ai voicing a cute taciturn bookworm -The first couple of episodes and tips Cons: -Unremarkable characters -Unbelievable events -The show fails to suspend the viewer’s disbelief -Little to no substance – an exposition of random events -Minami -Awful pacing Final Score: 2/10 Thank you Kayano Ai for saving this show from being a 1/10. God bless.

In a season packed full of highly anticipated sequels, Tomozaki-Kun rose to the top and became my favourite show of the season. Week after week, episodes flew by in what seemed like a few minutes. The characters and premise of the show provided one of the more memorable experiences I’ve had with a slice of life in some time. For me, Tomozaki-Kun is what most people THINK Oregairu is. The concept of a socially inept loser going from a shut-in to normal high schooler is flawlessly executed here. Normally in these types of shows, the MC’s character development doesn’t feel organic or realistic. Either the MCmoves too fast, or too slow. Here we have a protagonist who takes gradual but sure steps out of his comfort zone in order to improve himself and make genuine connections with others. Week in and week out we see Tomozaki become more open to other people and learn more about how interpersonal relationships work. I love the analogous relationship of a video game character’s development to Tomozaki’s and think it offers a unique perspective on this type of show. Unfortunately, there were a great deal of people who wrote this show off after a couple weeks. Is the MC a loser who says and does cringe things at the start? Yes. That’s kind of the point of the series. What would be the point if a character already starts off as an alpha chad who has nothing else to learn or room to grow? If you can bear with the MC’s growing pains in the beginning, I think you’ll find Tomozaki-Kun to be a very enjoyable show. I’ve said all that and haven’t even touched on the girls in this show. As with most shows in this genre, Tomozaki’s development is caused and expedited by a girl at school, and there are several potential waifus who play major roles in the series. Unlike other anime in this genre, these are fully fleshed out and well written characters with their own unique quirks and personalities. The girls are not just there for fan service or shipping wars, but offer genuine value to this series and are one of the most enjoyable parts. All in all, Tomozaki-Kun was by far one of the top 2 or 3 most enjoyable shows this season. It’s one of only a few that I actually looked forward to on a weekly basis and now that the season is over, I can’t wait to get into the LNs. Tomozaki-Kun gets 10 tackfams out of 10.